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About this tool
One and two minute post-exercise heart rate recovery with clinical thresholds and a fitness band.
Heart rate recovery is the number of beats your pulse falls in the first minute after stopping exercise: HRR1 = peak heart rate − heart rate at 60 seconds, with HRR2 measured the same way at 120 seconds. This calculator reports both, expresses them as a share of peak heart rate and of heart rate reserve, and compares HRR1 against the published cut-offs — 12 bpm after an active cool-down (Cole et al., NEJM 1999) or 18 bpm when recovery is seated or supine (Watanabe et al., Circulation 2001). It is a fitness and monitoring aid, not a diagnostic test.
Open Heart Rate Recovery Calculator on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Enter the values you already know.
Fine-tune the options to match your scenario.
Read the result and use it in your planning or reporting.
Applies the 12 bpm cool-down cut-off or the 18 bpm supine cut-off depending on what you actually did.
Reports HRR1, HRR2 and the drop in the second minute alone, which fades much faster than the first.
Shows recovery as a percentage of peak heart rate and of heart rate reserve, so results compare across fitness levels.
A drop of 30 bpm or more in the first minute is typical of a recreationally fit adult, 40 to 50 bpm is good, and above 50 bpm is common in trained endurance athletes. Below about 20 bpm suggests limited aerobic conditioning, and 12 bpm or less after an active cool-down is the value flagged as abnormal in the research.
Note your peak heart rate as you stop, start a timer immediately, hold one posture, and record the reading at exactly 60 seconds and again at 120 seconds. Posture matters enormously — lying down produces a much larger drop than walking — so keep the protocol identical every time you retest.
Not on its own. A slow one-minute recovery has been linked to higher cardiovascular risk in large treadmill-testing studies, but a single reading from a wrist monitor after a gym session is not a diagnosis. Beta-blockers, dehydration, heat, illness and simply stopping in a different posture all reduce the figure. Persistent slow recovery is worth raising with a doctor.
Yes. Consistent aerobic training — several easy-to-moderate sessions a week — improves parasympathetic reactivation and typically raises the one-minute drop over weeks to months. Adequate sleep, hydration and limiting alcohol also help, while overreaching in training tends to flatten it temporarily.
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